Two things are certain in this life,  we are born and we will one day die.   The time of death is uncertain, and in our life between these two we try and be of benefit to our families, community, country and the world at large.

We are all part of the same human family; we are all interconnected.  This has been highlighted  over the past two years with the pandemic.  News bulletins brought us graphic images of family and friends mourning because they were not able to be with their loved ones before death and for the funeral.  Harrowing images of countries being in lockdown showed us so many people dying daily and corpses being loaded into trucks heading to the cemetery for mass graves.   

For a while the world went quiet as we all felt the sorrow of people who were unknown to us, as well as the fear of what lay ahead.  We each dealt with it differently according to our cultural background and conditional on whether we are able to face our own mortality.

Fear is a feeling that comes usually because we don’t know about the issue that is confronting us, we have no experience with it, and we can’t predict what is going to happen.  We don’t know what to do.  Losing confidence in ourselves, we get shaky.

It is an indictment on us all that we can talk to someone on the other side of the world and even in space through technology, but because of fear avoid face-to-face communication with a work-mate or someone we see every day, or people within our own family… but especially someone who is dying.